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On February 15, the ZSP and Tenants' Action organized a protest on the main square in Wroclaw against the rise in prices of public transport. The members of ZSP reminded people of their protests in 2008 against the last price rise. Since that time, experts have noted that the quality of public transport declined, not improved. Lines are being eliminated and are running less frequently. So the people are wondering if the new price increases will just mean even worse service. The activists stressed that the politicians always claim that there is no money for public services, but they always find money for stadiums or fountains, like the ones recently built in Wroclaw, at extremely high costs.
The activists also asked why rich people who live in villas outside the city and ride in expensive cars should make such decisions and called for self-organization and direct control of public funds.
On February 2 members of the ZSP in Warsaw protested, together with students, teachers and parents, at the session of the City Council about the closure of schools. The meeting was interrupted at various times and as a result of the protests, the Council was forced to stay all night, eventually passing the vote only at 3AM.
It is clear that such protests will not change the votes in the Council since it has an absolute majority of neoliberals who make decisions in advance and will make decisions behind closed doors is necessary. Only a radicalization of the protests and more concrete action will have any impact so the ZSP is calling for this. More protests are scheduled for February 13 and 16. The Education Workers Union, which had been inactive for a while, has been reactivated and hopes to organize some public assembly on the issue.
On February 3-4, ZSP Warsaw is holding informational actions in solidarity with library workers struggling against budget cuts and other measures which negatively affect both their working conditions and the quality of the libraries.
Library workers in Spain, inspired by the Save our Libraries Day protests in Great Britain, decided this year to protest. The CNT union in the National Library of Spain asked for international solidarity. It has been in a conflict with the National Library because of its use of outsourced workers instead of permanent staff and because of repressions and firings made by the library against its activists.
ZSP strongly condemns the closure of public schools around Warsaw and calls for more protests against the city government and direct action! On January 31, it took part in two protests in Praga called by parents, teachers and pupils and we will try to mobilize public support for further action. One of the protests saw some of the students and teachers of a lyceum decide to march on to the local council. Once there we demanded to see the mayor, who just responded with bullshit. ZSP will protest at the City Council on Thursday and calls for public opposition to the plans. It also will discuss ideas for direct action with our neighbours and push for the idea of the occupation of the schools, keeping them open at night and turning them into public spaces of popular resistance.
Photos from today's actions: http://zspwawa.blogspot.com/2012/01/protest-against-liquidations-of-scho...
TAKE ACTION AGAINST ANTI-SOCIAL POLICIES NOW!
31.1.12
ZSP strongly condemns the actions of the authorities in Warsaw and other cities which have decided to make cuts in public education expenditures by closing down public schools. At the same time that the authorities have made these cuts, we have almost 500 useless politicians deciding our local matters in their interests. The city wastes huge amounts of money on public contracts to private businesses run by their friends, builds a massively expensive sports stadium and even publishes a calendar with an antisemitic poster using public money. For all this and for their own bonuses and perks, they always have money. But when it comes to the future of our children, again we hear them claim that we don't have money.
The ZSP-IWA has initiated a campaign against pension reform in Poland. The government has announced its intention to start raising the retirement age beginning in 2013, also eliminating early retirement options for certain categories of workers.
We criticize both these plans and the existing pension system, which is highly dependent on financial speculation and which currently provides pensions which put most retired people in dire poverty.
On March 31, 2012, the ZSP-IWA will organize a demonstration in Warsaw against social cuts in areas such as day care, refunds for prescription drugs, social benefits to families, public health care, higher education, public housing and transport.
Towards the end of the year, the government announced plans to introduce even more drastic austerity measures, on the recommendation of international institutions such as the IMF. Working people have already been massively hit by all sorts of cuts and the commercialization and privatization of many social services. This has all cut financing from the public sector, adding additional costs for the use of basic services such as health care and education, making them unaccessible for large portions of society.
On January 20 a picket was held at Roche Poland concerning the dismissal of our colleague and the situation regarding employment practices in the firm in general.
Short-term work, fictitious self-employment and general precarity despite the huge wealth of the multinational. The firm would like to have workers who are "not workers" - who can be gotten rid of at any time, without any compensation or any reason. The fictitious self-employed also do not get benefits such as paid vacation, maternity leave and even do not have their social security paid. Our colleague is fighting to be reinstated to work and claims that his lack of employment status was a fiction.
On January 16, the ZSP held another picket in solidarity with the strikers from Eulen-ABB in Cordoba who began an indefinite strike on November 28, 2011. The workers have been replaced by new ones from Adecco, who play the role of strike breaker in this conflict and which in general plays the role of providing staff for business which they can dispose of any time.
All of the striking workers have been fired by Eulen, the company they were outsourced from. The workers are demanding that they be given permanent contracts in ABB or at least are given the jobs that have been outsourced to Adecco.
Having learnt of the dismissal of all the striking workers from the ABB factory in Cordoba, ZSP decided to make a solidarity action the next day. This time we went to the headquarters of Adecco temp agency in Poland, to denounce their role in undermining the workers' struggle. Adecco replaced the old Eulen staff at the ABB factory.
We informed Adecco about why we came and handed out leaflets informing about the conflict in Spain and also criticizing the role of temporary work agencies in the decline of working conditions.
Since some foreigners work in that and some neighbouring buildings, we also produced an English-language version of the leaflet: http://www.zsp.net.pl/adecco-leaflet
